Clichés 2 

Monotypes from the Klisze series (1980-1981) comprise an early project by Tomasz Struk, an artist, who has been focusing on recalling the traces of the passing time. In doing so, he has taken advantage of numerous means of artistic expression – graphics, painting, photography, video works and installations. His works were usually created in series, in which he multiplied the same individual motifs – fragments of photographs or frottage prints of rock engravings, which he then transformed and enlarged until only the raster grain or an almost empty surface remained. In Klisze, Struk used fragments of sea photographs, with paint streaks left by a thick paintbrush or a painting knife guided by a free gesture. As a result, the artist captured a double trace of a bygone moment – the moment of the artist’s painting gesture and the moment of the waves crashing against the sea shore in the photographs. The motif of sea waves has been very significant and frequently referred to in Struk’s works as a symbol of human fate. According to the artist, reality is dominated by constant movement (appearance and disappearance) – the lines between the present and the past are blurred. A gesture, which is another important element of Struk’s works, bringing them closer to the action painting and process oriented art, marks the presence of the artist – his trace, notes on the graphic score. Thanks to this, he has created a palimpsest, a multi-layered text reconstructing bridges between distant events in time and space. For Tomasz Struk, the form of a painting is not a representation, but rather a discovery of memory.

Marlena Chybowska-Butler